1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for data communications through a host Fibre Channel adapter (‘HFCA’).
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Powerful computer systems today are increasingly partitioned into a number of logical partitions. Each of these logical partitions typically accesses I/O resources, including disk storage. Such disk storage today is commonly accessed via a Fibre Channel storage area network. The drawback to this solution is that each logical partition is required to have its own, separate, physical Fibre Channel adapter to connect to a Fiber Channel network. For a large system, such a solution requires a large number of physical adapters, which drives significant additional expense. The additional expense includes not only the adapters themselves but also the physical enclosures that provide associated PCI or PCIe adapter slots, as well as the additional power requirements of many additional physical adapters.